


Echo, laying naked by the well in the woods

by Beatrice_Sank



Series: Take(s) Two [1]
Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Did I mention this is weird, Echolalia, Experimental Style I guess, Gen, Healing, Identity, In which I make Jeffries' a psychanalysing teapot and also an ELIZA of sorts, Memory, Naido and Jeffries' friendship, Pain, Poetry and symbolism probably, Sisterhood, Solidarity, Spirits of the Lodge, Tale of origins, Trauma, What is time, play on pronouns, time loops, vague and incoherent allusion to the myth of Echo, you know how women get hurt in Lynch's works and everywhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 02:50:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15876948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beatrice_Sank/pseuds/Beatrice_Sank
Summary: Though they blinded her, Naido remains a curious spirit. One that cannot see, one that cannot speak, yet one who listens. What she needs though is someone who will know how to listen back, and then she will change. Sometimes it takes several tries.A personal take on the mythology of the Lodges and its inhabitants, and what Naido could represent. A story of time, identity, memory and repetition, friendship and sisterhood. Deals with trauma, but so vaguely and in such a symbolic way that I hope it won't disturb anyone. It also is a bit experimental, be warned.Written for the wonderfulxstrange challenge!





	Echo, laying naked by the well in the woods

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DetroitBabe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DetroitBabe/gifts).



> This was written for DetroitBabe, with a prompt that requested some character study on Naido: what kind of spirit is she, how does she live, does she has an agenda in all this...  
> So the first question I asked myself was: how do you perceive the world when you have no real eyes and no real voice?  
> The second was: how did that happen?  
> The third: what can she represent, in the logic of this universe?
> 
> I'm afraid this doesn't answer in a very rational way, and the result is admittedly quite strange, but I think the nature of this character is actually an important subject to explore.  
> Also: this was written with William Basinki's Disintegration Loops in mind, so I recommend it as a playlist, especially III.  
> Alternatively, I feel that Philip Glass' (the complete set) works well with it too.

 

She opens her eyes. Except of course, she doesn't. Even if, at the beginning, – before–, there must have been, necessarily, a moment when she opened them truly, for the briefest time, the briefest glimpse at everything, when everything still had a face of its own. She has been looking for that moment ever since.

 

Then her eyes, like carnivorous flowers, ate the world away.

 

“ _Let's try this one more time.”_

“Time.”

 

She will say it again.

 

One thing she remembers, not that it's important in any of the usual ways, is that the lids of scar tissue that patch her eyes used to be softer to the touch, pliable. They have solidified over the years and now, much like the shell of of a frightened insect, feel almost polished and woody, halfway between the living realm and a different place, still, mineral and petrified.

 

Not that you need eyes here, where it's always night, “blue and heavy” her sister told her, and she senses it, air that weights like lead with an aquatic scent, the texture of a worn-out veil. Night as endless as the corridors, switching and twisting according to the mood of the house, the secret logic of which her body learned ages ago, time, time and time ago, letting her nails scratch the walls as she goes, again and again. It's the only space she's ever known, a slimy animal that folds on itself, with spiraling, tender bones, laying its eggs anarchically. And here they are, the residents, living in a web of nests, proliferating and to some extent, competing for an access to the light.

 

When she was barely out in this world, and a wilder creature than she is now, the suffering still so raw, she believed, she clutched to the idea that she was lucky to live all this way up, in the castle where the waves can almost reach her window, touching her lightly with brisk and salty tears. Better here than the rooms that lie at the bottom of the elevator's empty cage. Black under her lids. Marshy. Puffs of dead plants embracing her every time she bends over the hole, trying to hear some echoes from below.

Although she probably doesn't want to know.

“You should never descend,” her sister told her. She stood silent, keeping the word to herself, never able to explain how she finally understood that when someone locks you up in a tower, it isn't for you to get closer to the sky. Instead she tiptoes around the well, circling and circling, and whispers to herself: “Descend.”

 

She will say it again.

 

Because at birth, they took her eyes, and they took her tongue. It must have been something she had said, at that moment, the moment she is looking for, when she first saw, when she first spoke.

“ _I gather you were quite loud.”_

Since then she only ever had the voice of others to mirror, never allowed to speak for herself. Borrowed words. Echoes.

*

“Let me guess, it's the same old story right?” The man has clearly lost his patience many rooms ago when he enters hers, panting, and carrying the smell of fight, earth and arrogance. “You won't answer me either. One of the crippled ones. Are you a big family? But you get the fancy boarding apparently, so I suppose it's even.”

“Even,” she says back hesitantly, tracing the rough lines around her eyes where the stitches used to be.

She's not a great talker, and yes she won't answer the man or point out that he is beginning to lose substance and to grow feathers, having let his anger run free while he looked for a way out. But she listens. Not to him, really, he's off on his way soon enough. To the others. They are always there. Hundreds, thousands of voice echoing in her head since her birth, or rather since… since the world disappeared from her view. Soft, broken voices, speaking unspeakable words, and crying, crying, weeping, and sometimes, sometimes, calling for help. Girls. All of them. That's how she knew she must be one.

 

“ _One?”_

 

She will say it again.

 

One of them.

 

So she wouldn't say she's lonely. Couldn't. And she has her sister, too. A frail body and hair that waves like the sea, wide eyes, woolen clothes to press her face against. She loves her with her life. But sometimes, sometimes… she wishes she would question the frontiers of the room she's been assigned, too. She know she won't, at least not for now: her mother frightens her too much.

 

Not her mother. Different mothers, but they are still sisters, because their mothers are only different the way there seems to be two different lodges down here.

 _If you look at it from the right angle, it's all one big house_ , Jeffries says.

And sisterhood has little to do with who throws you into existence, but how you are thrown into it. How. They were born in sorrow, the two of them. Sometimes she puts her head on Ronette's shoulder and they dance, slowly, endlessly, whispering sweet nothings to each other, and as she guides her fingers into her hair, she sees, clear as the sea, that they too are two sides of the same coin.

“ _Flip it.”_ Jeffries always come up with curious suggestions. _“In your mind's eye, whose face do you see?”_ Even if he smells of blood sometimes, he tells the best riddles in all the house.

 

Yes, Ronette is terrified of her mother. And though it is only natural, lately she has come to think that may be the essential difference between them. She got lucky, at first. Happy. She got kissed into the world. But then it all began to hurt.

Even so, there is a certain degree of change in her that she never observed in any of the other residents, including those who can steal other faces. Now she thinks, now she observes.Once upon a time there was no place for that in her, she could only hear the cries in her head and feel...feel... the absence of the world.

 

She will say it again.

 

 

Which is why, having decided that she is one of the curious spirits, when she's ready, she descends. Secretly, silently, although she belongs on even ground.

Upstairs, downstairs. She drinks the foul air from the elevator well. Smoke and burned flesh, then new walls to scratch as she looks for a passage. Her space unfolds a little, in terror, as she repeats words from new lips, cruel ones, “well”, “eye”, “descend”. “Convenience store”. Though most of the residents here seem to be unable to see her, there is one word above all others that define the inferior levels of the castle.

“Me”.

Me me me me me me me me

For the first time, ignoring all the voices in her head, she wonders what _me_ might be.

The question takes so much space that she gets lost in the unfamiliar labyrinth. It is when she surrenders, driven away by the animal cries that seem to come from everywhere, that she finds him. The room she steps in has a different atmosphere, fuller, more… misty.

“ _Oh, look at you,”_ a soft voice greets. _“Now this is quite inspiring.”_

Her hands reach out to find curves that feel very different from her mother's body. Stiffer. Solid.

This is the first time she meets Phillip Jeffries.

 

She will say it again.

 

“ _What is your name?”_ the hypnotic voice asks. _“I feel I might have known that, but at the moment it escapes me.”_

“Me?” From the start she knows she will never be able to sound exactly like him.

“ _I see. You'd better take a seat.”_

 

She stays for a while, listening to his heavy breathing, as her heart returns, slowly, to its normal beat.

*

Downstairs, upstairs. She memorizes the way between the castle and the convenient store's motel.

“ _Princess in a dungeon. Tasteless,”_ scuffs Jeffries, filling the room with honeydew scented sarcasms.

 

Some nights she visits him, and he blows stream into her ear, cautiously, secret bedtime stories or snide comments, and she learns to laugh, resting her forehead against his warm metallic side when she knows she has done too much and the weight of the night is falling back on her.

It's nice, she decides, to have a friend.

*

Other times he lets out a low whistle, a boiling song that she can echo, for them to sing together. She is the perfect choir; Ronette and her practice together, sisters of mercy, girls of constant sorrow.

 

She will say it again.

 

He knows about her birth, of course. There is no knowledge more common, because these tales are constantly traveling around the house, through words, gestures or electric static. The souls retell them again and again, so obsessively that they have become a second currency among them. It is what binds them together, upper and lower spirits. Everybody enjoys a good beginning. Everybody wants to know what your daily garmonbrozia is made of.

“ _Office gossip. What can you do?”_

Here is what they say:

 

She was born punished. As she opened her eyes, she crossed the threshold, and a reflection was created; this is how she came to see the world. And she saw it as it is. And she saw herself.

 

She screamed.

 

This is why they sewed her eyes shut, why her voice got lost in the echo.

 

“ _And how do_ _es_ _that make you feel?”_ Phillip asks with what sounds like sincere curiosity.

“Feel.”

“ _Yes, I supposed as much. You really don't remember?”_

“Remember,” she answers in a small voice.

When Phillip sights it feels the room with fog so thick it tastes like rain. It is a feeling she enjoys, much to his dismay, turning, arms open, for it to engulf her completely.

“ _We'll never make any progress if you insist on being petulant, you know.”_

“No,”she chirps, arching her arms above her head like a ballerina.

*

He creates a loop for her.

“ _It's only a theory of mine, but since you're getting so curious… I know of a few things, experiments that could help. You don't have to say yes.”_

Since she cannot stare, she has to slap him on the flank.

*

She will say it again.

And again.

It's a very short loop, or at least one that she cannot comprehend fully, without her eyes, but it's an excruciating experience nonetheless. The moment she has been looking for is there after all, so close and yet out of her reach, as she listens, again and again, at the same wild gasp, the same unspeakable cry, and then to the needle that pierces through skin, stitches made by an expert hand…

 

“ _Not a hand. Not just a hand. The hand is not responsible for this, just as your eyes aren't to blame.”_

 

It's a man, though. Or something wearing the face of a man, denying her, denying her, denying her almost everything.

“ _Well of course.”_ Phillip is rarely impressed.

 

“ _Your problem, darling, is that they wouldn't let you exist. They tried to cut you from the rest. To isolate you.”_

“You.” When confronted with memories she cannot identify, she always finds it better to change the subject.

“ _Oh, not for me. I suppose I brought this upon myself, you're not the only one who's curious about things. Though there are obvious inconveniences, it isn't all bad, and on occasions I find that this little predicament allows me to make myself...useful. More than I ever was before, I'm afraid.”_

“Afraid,” she repeats, but the ring of it is subtly different. A gentle streak of cloud brushes against her shoulder.

“ _Good. We are getting closer. Now tell me, what is your name?”_

 

She will say it again.

 

*

One more time. They do this countless times. The loop repeats itself. They eyes are sewed shut. The world is taken away. The voice is lost. She has nothing to her name, except, except...a word. Hundreds of reenactments, and now she has it, all the voices in her head converging into one. Word. Say it. Say it. Say the thing that reverberated everywhere ever since the birth of time, name it, baptize yourself Echo for I will not put a stone in your mouth and leave you for dead. You will say it again and I will speak for anyone else but.

“Pain.”

Anyone else but me.

Me.

I am Pain.

I am what hurts when you are hurt. Sisters. I am the tremor in your voice when you cry so hard it feels like there are two of you.

 

I will say it again. Your pain is mine and I am me, and as I repeat it, you will begin to heal.

 

*

“ _...and you know I barely slept at first, I swear those monkeys are just a pain in the...”_

“Pain.”

It gives him pause, and as he falls silent she feels the atmosphere charging with renewed electricity.

“ _It was about time,”_ he buzzes. It's refreshing, like a marine breeze in the overheated motel room, when Jeffries gets emotional.

“Time.”

“ _Ah, yes. But don't worry. It will come to you with practice, you'll see.”_

“Sea.” And it is my first real word, the one I pronounce with glee.

 

Though she doesn't succeed in being _me_ all the time, she becomes slowly conscious that the voices in her head are separated from her, external. Millions of voices, hurt. And somewhere, underneath it all, buried, her own hurt. That was her role from the beginning, but she didn't know how to play it.

Echo, oh Echo, bearer of pain, denied a voice of her own. But one by one you will claim the words.

 

*

“Pain.”

“ _Very noble and all that, really, but not the easiest name to carry, don't you think? You might want to change it, were you to...travel, one day.”_

They all want to. They know they only live in the pocket of the universe there, nothing too substantial, not the real thing. At least that's what the souls in the lower parts scream all day long. There is a pull, a call for something more that she feels strongly these days. She has a name now. Once she'll be out of the nightmare she'll have nowhere to go, but it doesn't matter.

“ _I once knew of a girl, she was a good listener too...”_

“Two.”

“ _Now you're just being difficult.”_

 

She will say it again. One. Two. Time and time again until we can set this right.

 

*

Most of the residents would like pain to make you helpless, but Pain finds out that is not what she is. Or at least not what she is becoming. Finally she understands where it's all headed, this metamorphosis of sorts, and why she had to forge herself a chrysalis. She will go out of here and in the end, I will heal.

 

And maybe, if I echo them, others will, too.

*

 

“I lost my way again,” the girl says. She smells different from the other souls, velvet and marble, cold smells, like someone who has been waiting for a very long time.

“Who are you?”

“You.”

“Oh,” the girl says. “Yes. Yes, that would make sense.”

Hesitantly, she stretches her fingers to touch the lost girl's face. So young. And yet so old she feels she may know her.

 

The rose garden is a good meeting point for lost souls, and that is where she takes her, never letting go of her small hand. Besides, it seems to her the girl would benefit from the sea air and the open sky, after being confined in the house for so long. Plants are rare around here, and she used to come and lie down on the cobblestones to listen as the flowers grow.

“Those are beautiful. Is that what you wanted to show me?” Crumpled leaves, silky petals whose color is so vibrant she was always able to recognize it against her skin. Blue roses.

“But, I don't know, they kind of make me...” the voice breaks, “they kind of make me sad.”

“Sad,” she echoes knowingly.

“Yes,” the girl sobs. “They're so pretty I want to… I want to step on them and… crush them, crush them until there is nothing left on the ground but some wet blue pulp, and then spit on it.”

Her rage is so intense she's shaking, voice lower, deeper now, so different it's hard to recognize her.

“They shouldn't exist,” and all of a sudden it's over, she deflates, and moves her hand to caress the roses with the tip of her fingers, lightly.

“Exist,” she remarks encouragingly. She would know: even if the strange dancer who planted them is gone now, Ronette comes here everyday to cry over the flowerbeds and keep them watered. She claims they need tears to stay blue.

“They are so many of them,” the girl observes, calmer now. “They're growing high. Someone offered me an orchid once, white as a plastic bag. I kept it in my bedroom but I'm not… good at this, and after a while, I never understood what I did, but it died.”

“Died.”

“It happens,” the girl sniffs. “I should have taken better care.”

Her fingers glide along the girl's long hair, slowly, as she whispers:

“Care.”

Most residents are content to stay in their room, some are desperately looking for a way out, but they don't tend to interact with each other so much. She's different. She cares.

“Are you one of the angels?”

She has no answer to that.

“I think this is the right direction,” says the girl after a while. “But I'll try to come back if they let me. I missed...well. Thanks for your help.”

“Help.”

 

I will say it again.

 

*

 

After meeting the lost girl, I find that the cries in my head have become more bearable.

 

“ _Let's talk about all the progress you've made”_ , Jeffries says. “ _I'm very pleased with you. God knows this fucking mess wasn't your fault.”_

I really shouldn't but it's harder to resist, these days. Head hung in pretend modesty, I ask, with a small voice:

“Fuck?”

The walls shakes for so long because Phillip just can't stop laughing.

 

I like to think of myself more as a free spirit now, and isn't that, isn't that a bit funny? It's my new secret: sometimes I hide in a corner of my room, put the record-player on to cover my tracks, and laugh to myself, a good and innocent laugh which is not a sound you can easily find here. That one is mine, mine only.

 

“ _What about that man, the one you keep feeling was there with you at the beginning. The one who hurt you. Do you know what his face is like?”_

 

I don't. And I don't know what I look like either.

 

“ _I've thought of something. To help you go out. It's risky though, and more of a...shock therapy than what I've offered you up until now. What do you say?”_

 

I say that I need to come back to the world and finally play my part. Except of course I don't. Almost.

 

But it takes one more sacrifice.

*

 _You have to wait for the right hour,_ Phillip said, so I stay in my room next to the clock, listening to its ticking, very conscious that I cannot read it properly. _You'll just_ _k_ _now when it's time_ , he said. I wait and wait and wait, not daring to ask Ronette for anything, especially for her watch, since I'm not sure she can carry such a burden, and it would be too hard to say goodbye when I'm not even sure I'm truly leaving. It's not something I want to dwell on too much.

And suddenly, he's here. The man. A man. Enters the room.

Time.

Stops.

/

As he crosses the threshold, she sees him. She knows him. Friend or foe, lover, killer or father, she couldn't say and though he feels fragile and naked under his suit, she wonders for a second if she shouldn't hate him. And as she touches his face she recognizes something that she saw at birth.

 

_But on which side?_

 

No matter how hard she presses her hands against his eyes, she cannot decide. One thing is certain though: there is a mark on him, a stain that someone made, or maybe that he made himself. He has waited for a long time too.

 

“ _When you go in, you lose something. But when you go out too.”_

 

Jeffries warned her, and she had tried to prepare, thinking she would probably forget who she was for a while, go back to her old selfless form, but now that this man is here, she understands what she needs to do to cross to the other side.

 

Maybe it's not so much of a sacrifice, in the end. The man is here to go out, but he obviously has no idea what he's doing. Friendless. Is she getting sentimental now?

He will have nothing out there. He will be lost, helpless.

So she decides to help.

She gives him her echo.

After all it only seems appropriate.

 

 

This will do, for a while.

 

“ _I'll miss you, you know. It does get lonely. So if you ever meet someone in need of...counseling, please send them my way. What is it that they say, my door is, ah, always open.”_

 

Yes, this might do the trick. Everyone is looking for a moment.

 

Upstairs, upstairs, she climbs with him to the very top of the castle, because part of her always wished she could plunge into the sea, into the sky, and disappear.

 

Even words are failing me now, but as I gather myself for my grand escape, I realize I'm glad he is here to see me fall. Waiting for the lightening that will shatter and reassemble me, me, I remember that I am more than the sum of my parts, and they are more than me. Not just Pain, not just echoes. Sisters.

Now let me be. Let me insist.

 

And

 

She

 

Descends

 

.

 

 

I will see it him it again.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> So. Yeah. I just wanted to say that, weird as the text may be, I'm very, very happy I got this assignment, and I enjoyed writing it tremendously. I don't know why, but the idea of teapot!Jeffries as a shrink came almost immediately and wouldn't go away. 
> 
> To clarify, Naido isn't Diane in disguise in this, at least not for me, but red Diane is one of her incarnations, since Naido is the face of pain, a face that would fit for virtually any woman in the show... I think she can also be Annie, Audrey, Laura, and many, many others. May they all be kissed by Senorita Dido...  
> Another interpretation: the time loop as therapy. It may also be a way to look at the finale with less sad an eye; maybe Cooper will learn how to get out, eventually.
> 
> I was feeling a bit guilty that it got so experimental, so I wrote another of DetroitBabe's assignment, an office scene between Diane and Jeffries. But as you can guess, after this first text, connections were bound to happen, and so... it's actually a series in which parts have very vague parallel themes, but what they do have in common in echoes. Feel free to imagine temporal or symbolical links between them if you want.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [the once maiden of spring](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15916764) by [ohwhatagloomyshow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohwhatagloomyshow/pseuds/ohwhatagloomyshow)




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